Tuesday, October 15, 2013

DELIVERING THE MAIL: A delegation delivers a letter to U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin's office today urging him to end the government shutdown.

Wendell Griffen, a circuit judge who also is pastor of a Baptist church, joined a group that visited U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin's office today to urge him to stop blocking the operation of the federal government through his insistence on killing the federal Affordable Care Act that expands health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. He delivered a letter.

Wrote Griffen:

Dear Congressman Griffin:

You and others in Congress have refused to pass stand-alone legislation (a "Continuing Resolution") to provide funding for the U.S. government unless the legislation removes funding for the Affordable Care Act that Congress enacted and President Obama signed into law in 2010. Head Start programs, efforts to provide shelter and counseling for victims of domestic abuse and violence, and numerous other governmental measures that would prevent vulnerable people from exposure to unnecessary suffering and hardship are shuttered. Moreover, federal employees and others whose livelihoods depend on programs and services funded by the federal government now fmd themselves burdened by costs and inconveniences directly related to the government shutdown you and others in Congress have orchestrated.

I denounced your conduct during my sermon at New Millennium Church on October 13,2013. Like the prophet Jeremiah said of the rulers of his time and place, your actions are "appalling and horrible." You are holding vulnerable people in Central Arkansas and elsewhere across the United States hostage to anxiety and causing them to suffer needless pain. This is oppressive, cruel, hypocritical, and wicked. Shame on you for treating vulnerable people this way!

Supporters of Americans for Tax Fairness had announced earlier that they would visit Griffin's office on University at noon today to deliver a letter calling for him to vote to end the government shut down, lift the debt ceiling, end the automatic spending cuts and raise revenue by closing corporate tax loopholes. Several unions, clergy and others partcipated.

Interesting: A participant who frequently stages such press events at congressional offices said that building management forces them to leave when they appear at Griffin's office. When U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder used the same office, visitors were not shooed away.

KARK reports that one person was killed in a shooting about 10:40 p.m. Sunday near 21st and Oak Streets.

Additional pleadings have been filed in the citizen's lawsuit challenging the new Arkansas voter ID law that includes evidence the new law resulted in votes in a recent special election in Russellville not being counted.

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40/29 TV reports that two law officers were shot about 7 a.m. today near Hackett in Sebastian County and at mid-afternoon came word that one of them had died. Later in the day a suspect was taken into custody in the shooting.

A former employee of the Pulaski County sheriff and a North Little Rock woman who sold goods to the sheriff's office have pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a scheme to steal from the sheriff's office, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney's office.

President Obama today announced commutations of the sentences of 111 federal prisoners, including one from Arkansas.

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